The method is based on quantitative mRNA sequencing of individual cells in a population of embryonal stem cells. It showed non-genetic gene-expression heterogeneity among individual cells.
Yohei Sasagawa et al., Genome Biology 2013, 14:R31 doi:10.1186/gb-2013-14-4-r31
RIKEN group finds gene-expression heterogeneity in cell populations using mRNA-based „Quartz-Seq Method“